Dame Joanna Lumley to star in new Mark Gatiss’s A Ghost Story For Christmas

Dame Joanna Lumley and Tobias Menzies are to star in the latest “spine-chilling” episode of Mark Gatiss’s A Ghost Story For Christmas.

Multi award-winning Gatiss has written and directed A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Room in the Tower, which is based on the short story by E F Benson and was originally published in 1912.

It tells the story of Roger Winstanley, who has long been haunted by an unsettling, recurring dream – an invitation to spend the night in the house of an acquaintance where an unseen terror lurks.

As well as Lumley and Menzies, the cast also features Nancy Carroll, Ben Mansfield and Polly Walker.

Gatiss, who has won many awards for his acting and screenwriting including a Bafta TV award for Sherlock, said: “I’ve always wanted to adapt the great E F Benson’s ghost stories and this is one of his chilling best.

“I’m also very grateful to have been able to continue the most Christmassy of Christmas traditions.

“The Room in the Tower has been prepared for you – and with Tobias Menzies and the legendary Dame Joanna Lumley to boot!”

It is the eighth A Ghost Story for Christmas to have been adapted for the BBC by Gatiss after last year’s Woman of Stone, which followed The Mezzotint, Martin’s Close, Count Magnus and The Tractate Middoth – all of which were based on works by M R James.

In 2023 he wrote and directed Lot No 249 – an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story.

Mark Bell, commissioning editor for BBC Arts, said: “Mark and the team have gathered a wonderful cast for this atmospheric treat where dream meets terrifying reality.

“‘I have given you the room in the tower’ is a sentence nobody will want to hear once they have experienced this festive haunting.”

Principal photography took place earlier this year on location in Cobham Hall, Cobham, Kent.

It will be broadcast over the Christmas period.